Shoeless Joe & Me

by Dan Gutman

  Well, they must have thought that was just about the funniest thing they had ever heard in their lives. A few of them couldn’t stop laughing.

  “That’s a good one, kid!”

  “The Reds whupped the Sox fair and square,” added another reporter. “Don’t you worry about Shoeless Joe and the Sox. They’ll come back tomorrow.”

  “No, they won’t!” I yelled. “They’re playing to lose! You’ve got to believe me!”

  “Kid, we’re on deadline,” one of the reporters told me. “Why don’t you go home and let us do our job?”

  “Yeah, go play with your toys, sonny.”

  The reporters turned back to their typewriters, and the keys began click-clacking again. They didn’t want to listen to me.

  I had done all I could do. The fix was on. It was only a matter of time before the scandal would be exposed. Shoeless Joe, who hadn’t done anything wrong, would be caught up in it and his life would be ruined.

  I might as well go back home, I thought to myself. I took a seat and pulled one of my shiny new baseball cards out of my pocket. There was nothing to do but relax, let the tingling sensation wash over me, and I’d disappear. In the back of my mind, I still felt there was something I could do for Shoeless Joe. I just didn’t know what it was.

  That’s when another idea hit me. So what if I couldn’t prevent the Black Sox Scandal from happening? So what if I couldn’t save Joe’s reputation? I could do something even better.

  I could take Joe Jackson back home with me.

  20

  A Different World

  BY THIS TIME, THE USHERS AND SECURITY PEOPLE HAD left the ballpark. I went down to the front row and hopped the fence onto the field. The Sox dugout was empty. The door at the back of the dugout wasn’t locked. I opened it and went into the tunnel that connected the dugout to the locker room.

  Fortunately, the Sox were still there. I followed the sound of their voices until I reached the locker room. Some of the players had showered and were getting dressed. Others were still sitting at their lockers in their dirty uniforms. Nobody seemed to care when I came in.

  There was a lot of tension in the room. I could feel it. Kid Gleason, the manager, was stalking around, glaring at everybody. Chick Gandil was talking quietly with Eddie Cicotte. Cicotte must have said something funny, because Gandil started laughing.

  When Kid Gleason saw Gandil laugh, something must have snapped in him. Even though Gandil was about six inches taller and fifty pounds heavier, Gleason suddenly leaped toward the first baseman and wrapped his hands around his throat.

  “You think losing is funny, Gandil?” he shouted as he tried to strangle the bigger man. “You like to lose?”

  The other players separated the two men before any punches could be thrown. But the damage was done. A few minutes later, Ray Schalk, the catcher, attacked Eddie Cicotte and had to be pulled off him.

  Gloom filled the locker room. I saw Joe Jackson sitting at his locker, his head down, hands on his face. Swede Risberg came over to Joe before I could get to him.

  “You looked pretty good out there today, Jackson,” he said. It wasn’t a compliment, I could tell.

  “Thanks,” Joe said softly, his head still in his hands.

  “You’re making the rest of us look bad,” Swede continued, lowering his voice so the others wouldn’t hear.

  Joe looked up, anger in his eyes.

  “Then play like you want to win,” he said.

  I thought he might take a swing at Risberg, but he didn’t and Swede went off to take a shower. I pulled up the stool next to Joe.

  “This ain’t no place for a boy, Stosh,” he said. “You oughta get out of here. Go on home.”

  “I need to talk to you first, Joe. This is important.”

  “There’s nothin’ Ah can do,” Joe said glumly. “Ah played my best. The other guys—”

  “There is something you can do, Joe!” I said. “You can get out of here! Get out before it’s too late!”

  He looked up at me. “What are you talkin’ ’bout? Where am Ah gonna go?”

  “Joe, you’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you. But you have to, for your own good. I live in the future, and I can take you there with me.”

  Joe looked at me, expressionless.

  “Ah thought you said you lived in Louisville.”

  “I do! I live in Louisville in the twenty-first century. I traveled over eighty years back in time with a baseball card to meet you. Now I’m going to go back, and I can take you with me.”

  A little smile snuck into the corners of Joe’s mouth. “You gotta be kiddin’, Stosh.”

  “I’m not kidding!” I said, reaching into my pocket excitedly. “Look. You see this camera? You’ve never seen a camera like this, have you? That’s because it doesn’t exist in your time. And these baseball cards? Look at these statistics on the back. I come from the future, Joe!”

  Joe took one of the cards and examined it. Then I remembered he couldn’t read, so I told him the name of the player on the card was Barry Bonds, and that he’d hit seventy-three homers in the 2001 season.

  “Ah ain’t never heard of no ballplayer named Bonds.”

  “That’s because he plays in the future, Joe! He hasn’t even been born yet.”

  “Seventy-three homers in a season?” Joe chuckled. “Aw, c’mon, Stosh! Nobody could do that. Nobody ever hit thirty homers in one year.”

  “Joe, he did it!” I insisted. “It’s a whole different world in the future. I could take you with me and your life will be completely different.”

  Joe looked at me again, like he was trying to decide whether or not to believe me.

  “They got baseball where you live?” he asked.

  “Sure they do! And in the future, players like you make millions of dollars a year! You’ll be a rich man. And we’ve got cool stuff like DVD players, the Internet, and video games.”

  Joe thought it over for a minute or so, a puzzled look on his face. He kept looking over at me, as if he was expecting me to say “April fool!” or something.

  “Thanks, anyway, Stosh,” he said, shaking his head. “But even if you could do what you say you can, Ah got Katie to think about. We wanna have kids someday. And Ah got to think about my mama, too. Ah can’t go running out on them. Not at a time like this.”

  “Joe, all your troubles will be over if you come with me.”

  “Ah maybe can’t read,” Joe said, “but Ah know this much. A man can’t solve no problem by runnin’ away from it. Thanks, but Ah think Ah’ll stay put right here.”

  There was no convincing him. He stuck out his hand, and I shook it.

  “Good luck, Joe.”

  “You too, Stosh.”

  As I left the Sox locker room and made my way out of the ballpark, I was feeling pretty good. While I hadn’t exactly succeeded in my mission, I had given it my best shot. I felt a sense of satisfaction for at least trying to do something good.

  Even if Joe had agreed to come home with me, it might have been a big mistake. Where would he live in the future? How could a guy who couldn’t read or write survive in the twenty-first century?

  I figured I would go back to that park where I had seen Joe playing ball with those boys earlier in the day. Maybe I could find a nice, quiet, grassy spot under a tree where I could relax for a few minutes and prepare for my trip back home.

  I was thinking those pleasant thoughts when two big guys jumped me from behind.

  21

  The Right Thing

  A HAND CAME OUT OF NOWHERE, COVERED MY MOUTH, and wrapped around my face. The hand smelled of cigars. I had no time to react. Another guy grabbed my arms and twisted them behind my back. It hurt, and I was scared.

  “We been lookin’ for you,” a gruff voice spat in my ear.

  They were holding my head, but out of the corners of my eyes I could see that the two guys were the same two guys I’d encountered in the basement of that billiard parlor when I first arrived in 1919: A
be and Billy. They worked for that gambler Rothstein.

  “You gonna scream if I take my hand off your mouth?” Billy asked. I shook my head, and he took his hand away. They kept their grip on my hands behind my back, though.

  “That was pretty sharp, kid, the way you got out of that hotel room closet.”

  “I was scared.”

  “You better be more scared now.”

  “Are you going to lock me up again?”

  “No, we’re gonna hurt you.”

  My eyes bugged out.

  “Kid, I told you that if you ran away, I would have to hurt you. I’m a man who keeps my promises.”

  I should have listened to my mother. I should have listened to my mother. I should have listened to my mother.

  I kept repeating it to myself. How stupid I was! My mother warned me that it would be dangerous to go back in time again. She told me that the more I did it, the bigger the chance that something would go wrong. But, no, I had to go and listen to what my math teacher said about probability. And now I was going to get beaten up, maybe killed.

  As they marched me down the street, I looked around for a policeman or somebody. Somebody would have to notice these guys were taking me somewhere against my will. Somebody would do something about it.

  But nobody seemed to notice. All the Cincinnati fans were still giddily celebrating the outcome of the game.

  I couldn’t fight back. They were too big for me. When I decided to just stop walking, they grabbed my shoulders and dragged me. They dragged me into the billiard parlor and carried me roughly down the steps into the basement.

  Rothstein was sitting there. There was even more money on the table than last time. Rothstein was counting thick stacks of bills.

  “We found him, Mr. Rothstein,” Billy reported.

  “Where was he?”

  “We spotted him talking to some newspaper guys at the ballpark,” Abe replied. “Then he went into the Sox dugout. We followed him out of the ballpark. We don’t know where he was goin’ next.”

  “Good work, boys.” Rothstein ordered, “Tie him to the chair.”

  Abe pushed me down in the chair, while Billy grabbed some rope from a shelf. I could feel my heart beating in my chest. They wrapped the rope around me again and again until it just about covered my chest, arms, and legs. Then they pulled it tight and knotted it in several places. I tried to move my arms, but they were tight against the chair. I could feel sweat beading on my forehead and dripping under my arms.

  When he was satisfied that I wasn’t going anywhere, Rothstein got up and walked over to me. I looked to see if he was carrying a gun, but I didn’t see one.

  “Who did you talk to?” Rothstein demanded.

  “Nobody.”

  “I think you’re lying.”

  Of course I was lying. What else could I do?

  “Are you going to shoot me?” I asked.

  “No,” Rothstein replied. “I don’t shoot people.”

  I let out a sigh of relief.

  “Billy’s gonna shoot you.”

  I thought I was going to die right there. Billy pulled a revolver out of his belt and started sliding bullets into it. I gasped.

  “Please!” I begged. “I’m just a kid. I didn’t mean to hurt anybody. I just wanted to do the right thing.”

  “Sometimes the right thing is actually the wrong thing,” Rothstein explained. “You did the wrong thing, kid. So now I have to do the right thing.”

  “I won’t say a word! I swear it! Please don’t kill me.”

  Billy had finished loading the gun. I’m no cry-baby, but I couldn’t help but start crying. My life was about to come to an end.

  “I don’t see that I have any choice but to kill you,” Rothstein told me. “You ran away from me once and you went blabbing. If I let you go now, you’ll probably go blabbing some more. I can’t have you telling newspaper boys what we’re up to. This is business, sonny boy. I got a lot of dough riding on this Series. I won’t let you mess things up for me.”

  Rothstein stepped aside and motioned for Billy to do what he had to do. Billy stood in front of me and raised the gun.

  “Wait!” I shouted. I had one last, desperate idea.

  “What?” Billy asked.

  “I have a last request,” I said. “Aren’t you supposed to give somebody one last request before you kill them?”

  “Whaddaya want,” Abe asked, “your teddy bear?”

  “No,” I said. “There’s some baseball cards in my pocket. My left pants pocket. I want to hold one in my hand when I die. It means a lot to me. And I want a minute of silence before you shoot me. That’s all I ask for.”

  Billy looked at Rothstein. Rothstein nodded. Abe reached into my pocket and pulled out one of my baseball cards. The ropes were holding my hands down, so he put the card between my fingers.

  “Okay, kid,” Billy said. “You happy now? You got one minute.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to forget about what was happening to me. I tried to think about where I wanted to go. The future. I wanted to go back to my own time. I wanted to be safe again.

  “Make it snappy, kid,” Abe muttered. “We ain’t got all day.”

  Soon the tingling sensation arrived in my fingertips. I kept thinking about going back to my own time as the tingles moved up my hands, my arms, my chest. It was the most wonderful feeling in the world.

  “What’s happening?” Rothstein asked, alarmed.

  The tingling sensation washed down my body.

  “He’s gettin’ lighter! He’s disappearin’, boss!”

  “That’s impossible.”

  The tingling sensation washed down my legs.

  “Shoot him! He’s getting away!”

  As I felt myself fading away from 1919, the ropes that had been holding me tight against the chair began to slip down where my body had been sitting.

  I heard a gunshot.

  The bullet slammed into the back of the chair I had been sitting in.

  But I was gone.

  22

  The Favor

  I OPENED MY EYES, AFRAID THAT I MIGHT STILL BE sitting in the foul-smelling basement of that poolroom. I was afraid that I might be dead.

  There was a big cardboard cutout of Ken Griffey, Jr., in front of me, and it was the sweetest sight I’d ever seen. I was lying on the floor in Flip’s Fan Club. I felt my chest to see if there was a bullet hole or blood there. I was alive.

  I looked around. The walls of Flip’s were almost bare. I guessed that Flip had sold off just about everything in the store. There was a new sign on the door: GOING OUT OF BUSINESS.

  I stood up. Flip was sitting in his chair, putting some cards into boxes.

  “Stosh!” he said, surprised. “I didn’t see you come in.”

  “I…just got here,” I replied. “Are you still open?”

  “Tomorrow morning I have to close the store for good. Then I’ll watch your last game and I’ll be officially retired.”

  I shook my head. I was still getting over what had happened to me, thankful that I was alive. Nothing else mattered.

  “You okay, Stosh?” Flip asked. “You look a little pale. What’s with the old-time clothes? You goin’ to a costume party?”

  “No.” I chuckled. “Remember when you told me about Shoeless Joe Jackson?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And I told you I could travel through time with baseball cards?”

  “Yeah.” Flip snickered.

  “Well…I just got back from 1919,” I said. “I actually met Shoeless Joe Jackson.”

  Flip laughed. I went through my pockets to make sure I had all my stuff.

  “You crack me up,” he said. “Oh, I’m gonna miss you kids.”

  “Flip, when you gave me that baseball card, I told you I was going to do you a favor someday. Remember?”

  “Sure, but you don’t have to do me any favors, Stosh.”

  “I want to.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the two
scraps of paper Joe Jackson had autographed for me.

  “Here,” I said, handing them to Flip. “I want you to have these.”

  Flip took the papers and looked at them. One of the scraps was burned at the edge from Shoeless Joe’s candle.

  At first, Flip didn’t seem to understand what he was holding. But then, slowly, his eyes widened. He grabbed for his magnifying glass and examined the scraps of paper carefully.

  Flip’s jaw dropped open, and he looked at me. Now he knew. In his hand were two copies of the most valuable signature from the last two hundred years. In his hand was the equivalent of one million dollars.

  “These look authentic,” he whispered, his hand trembling.

  “I know they are.”

  “Where’d you get ’em, Stosh?”

  “Joe Jackson wrote them out for me personally,” I replied. “Like I told you, I can travel through time.”

  Flip looked at me. It was the same look Shoeless Joe had on his face when I told him I could travel through time.

  “They’re for you, Flip,” I said. “Maybe now you can buy a real baseball team, like you’ve always wanted.”

  Well, I’ve seen a few grown-ups cry in my life. But never like this. It was like Niagara Falls going down his face. He tried to give me back the autographs, but I wouldn’t take them.

  “Stosh, I don’t know how you got these,” Flip said, wiping his eyes with his handkerchief, “but I thank you.”

  He got up, went over to the door, and ripped up the GOING OUT OF BUSINESS sign.

  23

  An Old Friend

  FLIP WAS NICE ENOUGH TO DRIVE ME HOME (AFTER ALL, I did give him a million bucks!). Neither of us said much in the car. I think we were both still a little blown away by what had happened. And all because of a silly little baseball card.

  “Joey!” my mother shouted when she opened the front door. She hugged me like she didn’t ever want to let go. “I’m so glad you’re back!”

  “Mrs. Stoshack, your son is a remarkable boy,” Flip told my mom.

  “Don’t I know it!”